Zachary French, also known Jestre Kabel DeRama, UltimaMewtwo, and formerly as Shadow-Fox Kakuretsin, is an artist, author, fursuiter/performer, and occasional voice actor. He currently lives in the northwestern suburbs of Chicago, Illinois. He's a high school and DeVry University Bachelor of Science in Game and Simulation Programming graduate. As long as he's played games, he's decided to make them.

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Fandom involvement

Zachary's essentially been a part of the fandom for longer than he can remember, but didn't realize what he expressed was part of the fandom's mannerisms until 2004. Zach had heard of the term "furry" in 2001, but didn't look into it, due to recently creating his Mewtwo fancharacter, Ultima Mewtwo. Later, in 2004, was the year of Shadow Fox's creation of his fursona due to an inspiration in his freshman year of high school. As far as he knows, he'll probably be in the fandom as long as he lives, leaving a footprint here and there in the fandom and the real world.

Characters

Jestre, drawn by FA user, Barkkorn

Jestre Kabel DeRama - A recently created character, mid-year of 2009, from Zach is Jestre Kable DeRama. Zach came up with the word "Hyvanine" by making it up at first and seeing what species, which were his favorites, could fit in the species name whichever way. Initially, Zach went back and forth on the exact names to stand for Hyvanine, but has decided on the Hyvanine species being a mix of a hyena, fox, jackal, and weasel. Jestre's design is intended to encapsulate Zach's "crazy" personality traits and style portrayed when attending furry conventions. Additionally, Jestre was to be an original design based on Zach's affinity of the colors, black and white with a little bit of red added in. Some perceptions of Jestre could be that he is Zach's version of a Joker-esque character. The sharp and round markings are meant to imitate the playing card symbols like the diamond. The reason the eyes have black scleras with red irises, though inspired by Gambit from the 90's X-Men cartoon, is because Zach wanted to make them a little creepy, and the pupils are usually dilated to imitate the adrenaline from Jestre's insanity. Jestre would otherwise normally be seen with a black shirt and pants. As a side note, Jestre is the first character of Zach's to be made into a partial fursuit. Photos of the fursuit can be seen in Zach's Fur Affinity gallery. More recently, around the turn of 2010, Jestre's design was drastically altered. The current version is seen on right.

Ultima, drawn by a different dA friend.

Ultima Mewtwo - Before Shadow Fox, in 2001, Zach was obsessed with Mewtwo, a character from Pokémon, so much that he made his own Mewtwocharacter, named Ultima, whom of which ended up going through more changes than Shadow Fox. Ultima's concept started out with him having more scars than he does currently, and having longer, silver hair. Also, he had no wings, and a different swords at the time, which was Sephiroth's Masamune, and Cloud Strife's Buster Sword. Now, Ultima's only sword is something of Zach's own creation, named Cataclysm. Most of Ultima's changes can be seen in Zach's deviantART gallery.

Old version of Shadow, drawn by a dA friend.

Shadow-Fox Kakuretsin - Shadow Fox was originally a character created by Zachary in 2004. Zach was inspired by a friend (an anthro/furryartist and fan much like Zach) to make Shadow Fox. He was originally a red fox with blonde highlights in the hair, green eyes, and had a different style of clothing. Over time, the appearance kept being altered slightly until a year or so back, when Shadow Fox had been planned to be finalized as a somewhat Gothic silver fox ,that had altered colors, with shoulder length, dark blonde hair and hazel eyes (when Zach found out he had hazel eyes rather than green). However, since MFF 06, after buying a tail from the people at a booth from pawstar.com, he was inspired to change the fur color to a somewhat rusty gold tone along with having a different style to his look. Though now Shadow has long black hair, and both of his eyes are different, the one on his right, is red with a slit pupil, and the left one is silver with a circular pupil. Shadow Fox is essentially an exact copy of his artist, Zach, only in the form of an anthropomorphicfox. His design is often reworked.

Convention attendance

Trivia

Shadow Fox's original name was planned to be just Shadow much like his common alias, but when Zach saw how overused it was, he added Fox. Later, after seeing Shadow Fox was common around the internet, he added a last name of his own creation and hyphenated Shadow Fox which resulted in the name being Shadow-Fox Kakuretsin.

Anytime something was changed with the artist, Zach, in real life, he used to alter Shadow Fox to look the same way until late 2007.

Shadow Fox's coloration is varied from that of a normal fox. Such as there being white instead of black on the limbs and that color not going up so high.

Zach is the author of the currently defunct webcomic, 3 ½ Walls, which was irregularly submitted to his Fur Affinity and deviantART pages. It followed his two main fursonas as the comic proceeded with dialogue following a plot and intentionally breaking the fourth-wall as the comic title hints at.